translanguaging and multilingual picturebooks: gloria
TRANSCRIPT
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Translanguaging and Multilingual Picturebooks: Gloria Anzaldúa’s
Friends from the Other Side/Amigos Del Otro Lado
Saskia Kersten and Christian Ludwig
Abstract
English language teaching (ELT) is overcoming its monolingual character with students
increasingly bringing additional languages to the classroom. Closely related to this, there is
a growing awareness of the fact that students’ experiences with multilingualism are a
valuable resource which should also be harnessed in language classrooms. Even if English
is the language of instruction, the learners’ home languages, other languages and language
varieties spoken in the school and personal environments, all influence their learning process
and the formation of cultural identities. This paper looks critically at the traditional concept
of the monolingual language classroom and explores the potential of multilingual literature
which supports the learners’ second language development while, at the same time, raising
their awareness of multilingualism and developing their plurilingual literacies. The English-
Spanish children’s book Friends from the Other Side/Amigos del Otro Lado (1995) by
American writer and Chicana cultural theorist Gloria Anzaldúa serves as an example of how
working with multilingual literature can enrich the English learning experience of children
from different age groups.
Keywords: translanguaging, Chicano/a, multilingualism, multilingual picturebooks
Saskia Kersten is Senior Lecturer in English Language & Communication at the University
of Hertfordshire. Her research interests are teaching English to young learners with a focus
on formulaic language, corpus linguistics in interdisciplinary research and computer-
mediated communication.
Christian Ludwig is currently substitute professor at the University of Education Karlsruhe,
where he mainly teaches in the field of EFL methodology. Christian’s areas of research
include teaching literature, gender, and the reconstruction of identities in multimodal texts.
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Introduction
This article explores the notions of translanguaging and multilingual literature and relates
them to contemporary ELT. It makes the argument that multilingual literature, in particular
picturebooks, can be used as a resource to foster translanguaging by creating a
translanguaging space and teaching multilingual literacy. The implementation of
multilingual or, as it is sometimes also referred to, plurilingual, practices, has gained traction
in recent years, which manifests itself, among other things, in the fact that the new Common
European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) 2018 Companion Volume
(Council of Europe 2018) explicitly includes new, additional scales on plurilingual and
pluricultural competence. The difference in terminology is commonly that multilingual is
used at societal level, describing the many languages used by societal groups, whereas
plurilingual describes an individual’s knowledge of two or more languages at varying
degrees of competence (Council of Europe 2001, 2018; see also García & Li, 2014). For a
more detailed discussion, see e.g. García & Li (2014, Part I, chapter 1).
Although translanguaging is something that many, if not all, plurilingual speakers
regularly engage in at a local level, it will become even more important to be able to engage
in these ‘fluid practices’ in a globalized world and the resulting virtual spaces learners are
likely to inhabit. This will enable speakers to participate in communication in an even wider,
more diverse context (García & Li, 2014, pp. 25-26).
The first part of this paper outlines the academic debate on translanguaging in
relation to plurilingualism and argues that languages should not be regarded as separate
entities but rather as a continuum of linguistic skills of meaning-making at a learner’s
disposal. Fostering these skills should consequently be at the heart of language teaching,
allowing learners to experiment with and use all ‘meaning-making resources’ (García & Li,
2014, p. 80) they possess and also further the development of new strategies inherently
useful in our globalized, multilingual and multicultural world. Following the ‘multilingual
turn’ (May, 2013), ‘multilingual challenge’ (Kramsch, 2012) or even ‘post-Multilingualism
challenges’ (Li, 2017) in language pedagogy, any language teaching should be understood
not only to impart knowledge of one standard linguistic system, but also to encompass the
teaching and learning of multilingual and multicultural competencies and translanguaging
(García & Li, 2014; García & Kleyn, 2016). Moreover, Otheguy, García & Reid (2015)
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argue that a standard linguistic system, which they refer to as a ‘named national language’,
is itself a societal construct, not a linguistic reality. Therefore, the explicit inclusion of
multilingual practices, such as texts and media, enables learners to operate and learn in a
‘translanguaging space’ (Li, 2011; 2017), that is, a space that gives learners the room to
utilize all the linguistic resources they possess but hitherto may have only practised
separately in other contexts (García & Li, 2014) and to ‘go between and beyond socially
constructed language and education systems, structures and practices’ (Li, 2017, p. 16).
Using multilingual literature in ELT is one such way to create translanguaging opportunities
for learners.
The second part provides a brief overview of the conflictual history of the United
States and Mexico and the life of both Mexican Americans as well as the so-called wetbacks
(mojados) who cross the border illegally to find a better life. The ensuing section discusses
Gloria Anzaldúa’s widely acclaimed children’s book Friends from the Other Side – Amigos
Del OtroLado which broaches the issue of living in the US-Mexican borderlands by
describing the experiences of the Mexican American girl Prietita when being confronted
with the harshness of life of illegal Mexican immigrants. In order to help the boy Joaquín
and his mother, Prietita has to stand out against the male systems of power and
discrimination in her community and make decisions about her own life. The article
concludes by suggesting some implications for classroom practice.
Translanguaging — Concepts and Definitions
The term translanguaging itself was first coined by Cen Williams in the 1990s, who had
learners in Wales recast ‘their understandings received in one language in the other
language’, in this case English and Welsh, with the intention of deepening their
understanding and allowing them to change the language of the input and the output (García
& Kleyn, 2016, p. 11), thus leading to a deeper understanding of content as well as the
development of the languages involved (Li & García, 2017). Translanguaging takes the
internal perspective on bilinguals’ language practices, which are part of the same
interconnected system (Vogel & García, 2017). This view has evolved over time; where
García (2009) used translanguaging as an umbrella term that includes code-switching, later
sources argue that the two concepts are ‘epistemologically at odds’ (Vogel & García, 2017,
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see also Otheguy et al., 2015), as the term code-switching can be seen as preserving
dichotomous language categories by taking ‘as its starting point separate grammars for each
of the languages’ (Cenoz 2017a, p. 193; for a more detailed discussion, see e.g. García & Li,
2014). The term also denotes the perceived mixing of two named languages and therefore
does not adequately reflect the dynamic and creative practices plurilingual speakers engage
in and the underlying ‘complex linguistic realities’ (Li, 2017, p. 6) and may lead to fluid
practices being viewed as a ‘contaminated’ or ‘corrupted’ version of a named language and
therefore derided by society (terms such as Spanglish or Chinglish).
Canagarajah (2011, p. 401) defined translanguaging as ‘the ability of multilingual
speakers to shuttle between languages, treating the diverse languages that form their
repertoire as an integrated system’. García & Li (2014) and Li (2017), however, argue that
translanguaging goes beyond the mere ‘shuttling’ between languages and allows other
voices to come to the front, thus challenging and transforming classroom practices, in
particular the assumption that only the target language should be used.
Vogel & García (2017) acknowledge that a bilingual’s language repertoire ‘includes
features from what society would view as more than one named language’. This is not a
contradiction, because successful communication also means being able to gauge which
linguistic resources are the most useful in facilitating successful communication, including
appropriate register, style etc. Translanguaging, taking the perspective of the individual,
focuses on their idiolect and the way they make use of it in a given communicative context;
it is therefore ‘the view from inside the speaker’ (Otheguy et al., 2015, p. 297). The other
perspective, that of the speaker as a member of a set group, uses external categories to
determine to what extent the idiolect of a given speaker overlaps with that of other speakers,
thus enabling ‘the establishment of externally named boundaries’ (Otheguy et al., 2015, p.
297), for example by assigning the label English as opposed to Spanish, etc.
The notion of an integrated linguistic repertoire, rather than two (or more) separate
linguistic systems corresponding to different languages, is at the heart of translanguaging,
as translanguaging as a concept emerged in the context of research into plurilingualism and
the ‘multilingual turn’ (May, 2013). It rejects the idea that plurilingual speakers possess two
or more separate language systems. Rather, ‘bilinguals, multilinguals, and indeed, all users
of language, select and deploy particular features from a unitary linguistic repertoire’ (Vogel
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& García, 2017, unpaginated). García & Li (2014) argue that bilinguals are necessarily
different from monolinguals, because their lives and experiences are deeply rooted in diverse
linguistic practices, which leads to a multi-competence in plurilingual speakers that both
needs to be acknowledged and should also be actively encouraged in all language learning
contexts.
In order to utilize all the competencies and strategies they have at their disposal,
learners need a ‘translanguaging space’ (Li, 2011; 2017) in which they can integrate all the
practices they may have hitherto compartmentalized. A translanguaging space is also a social
space, a space in which ‘learners bring together different dimensions of their personal
history, experience, and environment; their attitudes, beliefs, and ideologies; their cognitive
and physical capacity, into one coordinated and meaningful performance’ (Li, 2017, p. 15).
It is also a space that unleashes creativity and criticality and has thus transformative power,
as new identities may be shaped (see the discussion of using a language portrayal below).
These notions directly link to what the author of the picturebook expresses with
regard to her own language practices: ‘neither español ni inglés, but both’ (Anzaldúa, 1987,
p. 77) and her own identity: ‘neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And like the ocean, neither
animal respects borders’ (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 84). García and Li (2014, p. 43) explicitly refer
to Anzaldúa’s work when discussing the political dimension of translanguaging:
Translanguaging provides this space sin fronteras – linguistic ones, nationalist
ones, cultural ones. Translanguaging for us refers to languaging actions that
enact a political process of social and subjectivity transformation which resists
the asymmetries of power that language and other meaning-making codes,
associated with one or another nationalist ideology, produce.
This political dimension not only ‘privileges bilingual performances and not just
monolingual ones’, which is a departure from traditional instructional settings where the
latter have been traditionally privileged, but also ‘challenges prevailing theories [...] in
order to disrupt the hierarchies that have delegitimized the language practices of those who
are minoritized’ (Vogel & García, 2017, unpaginated).
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Translanguaging and Language Pedagogy
One of the main reasons put forward in why translanguaging is a useful concept in the
context of fostering multilingualism is that
[w]hen looking deeply at the students in almost any given classroom, one cannot
accurately describe any such learning environment as monolingual or
monodialectical. Instead, teachers can uncover the multilingualism of their
classrooms to make visible the range of language practices that students have.
When these multilingual practices are being made to be a natural part of their
learning environment, they enrich the children’s education (Kleyn, 2016, p.
203).
It also allows for deeper engagement and encourages learners to make full use of their
linguistic repertoire when comprehending complex content (Vogel & García, 2017).
However, this enrichment of education that appears to be intuitively desirable is not
yet the norm. Cummins (2005, p. 588) states that, in the context of English as a Second
Language (ESL) or immersion/bilingual classes in the US and Canada, the ‘monolingual
instructional assumptions predominate’, even though these have ‘minimal research basis’.
These practices include using the target language only, discouraging students from
translating between L1 and L2 and from using bilingual dictionaries, which are all based on
the view that the two languages ‘constitute two solitudes’ (Cummins, 2005, p. 588) that
potentially hinder the learning of the other or are even seen as in danger of contaminating or
competing with each other. In a similar vein, García (2009, p. 141) calls this a ‘hegemony’
in which language hierarchies are established and ‘monolingualism is routinely accepted as
the norm, and bilingualism is accepted only as double monolingualism’, instead of
‘capitalizing on the children’s bilingual practices’.
Translanguaging in German ELT
In the German EFL context, for example, which is also the context for the implications for
the classroom discussed below, this view appears to be still prevalent and there seems to be
an underlying fear that if German or another home language of the students is used in the
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EFL classroom, this would not only detract from the limited time the learners are exposed
to English, but also may let those teachers, who are in most cases ‘non-native speakers’ of
English themselves, ‘off the hook’ so that they can all too gladly revert to teaching English
‘in German’, as it were, even if the inclusion of the mother tongue (or any other language)
may make learning the second language more effective (Butzkamm, 2003).
This ‘common assumption that only the ‘target’ language was to be used in language
education programs, and of strict language separation, has become increasingly questioned
as globalization has encouraged movement of people and information, shifting our
conceptions of language use’ (García & Li, 2014, p. 59). In the present article, we argue that
the translanguaging practices, as outlined here, do not open the door to reverting to, for
example, ‘teaching English in German’ at all. The main reason being that instead of simply
resorting to the named language generally used in school (for instance German), teachers
make use of the multilingual resources available in the classroom and beyond, including the
whole of the learners’ linguistic repertoire, which may or may not include the named national
language. This will, however, demand more flexibility from the teacher as well as the ability
to open up the language classroom to new ideas and practices. These may, at least in the
beginning, be more challenging for the teachers and require a willingness to question long-
standing ideologies, such as ‘target language only’, that prevail not only in teacher education,
but also in the minds of language learners and, depending on the context, their parents or
guardians.
Adopting and incorporating translanguaging in the classroom does not mean that the
teacher has to know all the languages present in their multilingual classroom nor does it
require a bilingual programme (García & Seltzer, 2016). What it does require is ‘trust that
bilingual students’ existing linguistic repertoire is not a threat to learning the new language
but must be leveraged to appropriate and integrate new features into an expanded repertoire’
(García & Seltzer, 2016, p. 24). This integration of new language practices, that is, adding
to existing meaning-making resources (García & Li, 2014), enables the users to transcend
boundaries and labels, thus going beyond languaging: they translanguage:
[L]anguage practices cannot be developed except through the students’ existing
knowledge. Thus, translanguaging enables emergent bilinguals to enter into a
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text that is encoded through language practices with which they are not quite
familiar’ and also ‘enables students’ to truly show what they know (García & Li,
2014, p. 80).
But, as Cenoz (2017b, p. 9) states,
multilingual speakers are not always aware of the resources they have and may
not use them to their full extent if they are not activated. Multilingual speakers
use their resources when they translanguage spontaneously but pedagogical
translanguaging has great potential because it can provide deeper understanding
of the content and can also be useful as scaffolding across languages.
Multilingual Education and Multilingual Literature
Current discussions involving the use of more than one language give the impression that
‘[...] multilingualism and multiculturalism [...] were recent discoveries instead of what they
really are: a condition of life as old as the human species.’ (Nettle & Romaine, 2000, p. 190).
Moreover, the term language itself constitutes a difficulty as many definitions of
multilingualism look at the term from a broader perspective, including not only officially
recognized languages but also dialects or codes, as the following definition of
multilingualism by the European Commission (2007, p. 6) elucidates: ‘In this context, a
language is defined neutrally as a variant which a group ascribes to itself for use as its
habitual code of communication. This includes regional languages, dialects, and sign
languages.’ This definition is in line with the view of the plurilingual speaker’s repertoire as
consisting of one unified system and the view that the boundaries between (named)
languages are socially and politically defined (Otheguy et al., 2015), as discussed above.
Similar to multilingualism, multilingual literature is not a new phenomenon, it
already existed in the late nineteenth century and has come to gain increasing scholarly
attention. When it comes to using multilingual texts in ELT, they prove to be particularly
useful as most multilingual writers also have a multilingual/multicultural background,
turning them into ‘living voices’ (Wood, 2006; cf. Elsner, 2012, p. 411) of the multilingual
world with its ‘hyphenated identities’ (Elsner, 2012, p. 412) we live in. These multilingual
and multicultural texts constitute ‘literary multilingualism’ and entail ‘a cross-cultural or
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experimental effect’ (Knauth, 2009, p. 41) and are ‘by and about diverse populations and
includes diverse perspectives’ (Gopalakrishnan, 2011, p. 29). In short, they are a
manifestation of multilingual practices and thus serve as vehicles to bring translanguaging
into the classroom. These texts not only represent the multilingual world outside the
classroom, but also (intentionally) disrupt the oft-monolingual learning environment,
creating opportunities for new perspectives and discussions on language and languaging.
These multilingual texts can also be used to aid learners’ comprehension of ‘complex
words, sentences, and concepts’ (Kleyn, 2016, p. 206). Using parallel texts in particular, as
in the example discussed below, allows learners to directly compare and contrast two or
more (named) languages. In doing this, learners not only expand their competence in either
language if they speak both languages, but also gain background knowledge that in turn
helps them to ‘make meaning of the content being taught’ (García & Li, 2014, p. 121).
Furthermore, activities involving multilingual literature allow for the possibility of cross-
linguistic transfer and raise metalinguistic awareness (García & Li, 2014).
In the following section, we discuss one such multilingual text in more detail and
suggest classroom activities that open up ELT to translanguaging opportunities. These in
turn help create translanguaging space for learners to reflect on language ideologies and
societal perceptions of speakers of certain named languages and provide opportunities to
discuss the link between language and identity within the text and beyond. For a discussion
of other English-Spanish picturebooks, see Daly (2018) and Rossato de Almeida (2018).
Gloria Anzaldúa and the Chicano/a Experience
The United States and Mexico share a long history of tensions and still today their
relationship is often characterized by antagonism and unilateralism. Since its independence
from Spanish rule after the Mexican War of Independence from 1810 to 1821, Mexico’s
autonomy was threatened principally by the United States. For example, since the 1830s,
Mexico had to fight a growing number of insurrectionist American settlers in Tejas, leading
to Mexico’s second armed conflict in a short time: the Mexican War (1846-1848), a brief
but intense conflict between the United States and the Mexican Republic. The conflict
resulted in the peace treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, still today a crucial event in Mexico’s
collective memory, as it gave the triumphant United States approximately 50 per cent of
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Mexican territory, including today’s states of Texas, Colorado, Arizona, California, Nevada,
and New Mexico. Since then, Mexico’s national identity as well as the identity of the many
‘illegal’ immigrants living in the United States have been defined by the idea of, as Cisneros
(2014) posits, borders having crossed the Latino community rather than the other way
around. This commonly held belief is, for example, expressed through the slogan of the
immigrant rights movement: ‘We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us!’ (Jackson,
2009, p. 6). In other words, many Mexicans did not come to the United States by choice, but
simply found themselves in alien territory as a result of America’s expansionist policy.
Among other things, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed the property and civil
rights of Mexicans who chose to remain in the United States as US citizens. Above all, the
US government’s disregard of these provisions has remained central to the understanding of
the Mexican experience. Since then, both the geographic and civic borders have played an
important role in the way Mexican Americans and Chicanos are viewed and how they view
their relationship with the United States.
In stark contrast to what had been promised to Mexicans who overnight took
American citizenship, former Mexicans were confronted with inequality, de facto
segregation, and the denial of their linguistic and cultural heritage in most areas of public
life, including education, housing and the workplace. Especially since the Second World
War, however, many Mexicans went through a process of Americanization or assimilation,
which ‘[...] was not seen as repressive but rather as a means for gaining status in society’
(Jackson, 2009, p. 10). Although the Mexican-American civil rights movement (El
Movimiento) has raised the political and public awareness of the situation of Mexican
Americans and resulted in substantial improvements in many areas of life, discrimination
based on race, police brutality, and the lack of social services are only some of the problems
they still face today. In other words, Mexican Americans still struggle to be accepted and
recognized as fully participating American citizens in a ‘[...] bifurcated America, with two
languages, Spanish and English, and two cultures, Anglo-Protestant and Hispanic’
(Huntington, 2004, p. xvi).
The term Chicano/a, which changed its meaning in the course of the 20th century,
plays an important role in this struggle for identity and equality (see also Keating, 2000, for
an interview with Anzaldúa on this topic). The term is difficult to define, especially as the
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native national group is subdivided into many regional groups, such as Tejanos or
Arizonenses, each with their distinct cultural, linguistic, and artistic traditions. While it was
mainly used as a derogatory term to insult poor Mexican immigrants living in the United
States in the early decades of the 19th century, in the 1960s and 70s it gave expression to the
new cultural and political identity of the Mexican-American community. It was also used by
Mexican-American civil rights activists to give expression to a feeling of social change.
Today, there is a strong public art movement, as a way of expressing Chicano identity
(‘depicting the life in the barrio’), focusing on a broad range of themes and issues such as
immigration and the border, feminism, sexuality, religion, and family. These issues, and
many others, also play a central role in the rich Chicano literary tradition. Until today, Gloria
E. Anzaldúa (1941-2004) has remained one of the most acclaimed lesbian and feminist
scholars of Chicana cultural and queer theory. Coming from a traditional Chicano family,
Anzaldúa was the first one in her family to have access to higher education. Through her
work, she contributed to a wider and mainstream recognition and understanding of women
of colour in the United States and the limited notions of gender and sexuality they are trapped
in. Although, for reasons of space, it is not possible to discuss all of Anzaldúa’s contributions
to feminist and Chicana feminist theory, attention might be paid by teachers to Anzaldúa’s
idea of labelling, equally present within as well as outside the Chicano community:
While I advocate putting Chicana, tejana, working-class, dyke-feminist poet,
writer theorist in front of my name, I do so for reasons different than those of the
dominant culture [...] so that the Chicana and lesbian and all the other persons in
me don’t get erased, omitted, or killed (Anzaldúa, 1998, p. 264 as qtd. in
Anzaldúa & Keating 2009, p. 164).
Anzaldúa’s most influential works include Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
(1987) as well as three bilingual English-Spanish children’s books. Partly based on
Anzaldúa’s life, all three stories, Prietita Has a Friend/Prietitatiene un amigo (1991),
Friends from the Other Side/Amigos Del OtroLado(1995), and Prietita and the Ghost
Woman/Prietita y La Llorona (1996) revolve around the young Chicana girl Prietita, who
lives in the US-Mexican borderlands and her life near the US-Mexican border.
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Anzaldúa’s Picturebook: Friends from the Other Side/Amigos Del Otro Lado,
Illustrated by Consuelo Méndez
In Friends from the Other Side/Amigos Del Otro Lado, Prietita meets the young Mexican
boy Joaquín who, together with his mother, illegally crossed the border to find work. In the
course of the story, Prietita and Joaquín become friends and Prietita protects him not only
from the daily racism he experiences but also from the Border Patrol.
Figure 1: Cover of Anzaldúa’s Friends from the Other Side/Amigos Del Otro Lado
The second double page of the picturebook shows the two main protagonists of the story:
the American-Mexican girl who lives close to the Rio Grande River, on the US side of the
US-Mexican border, and the young, illegal immigrant Joaquín. The social status of the two
teenagers is intrinsic to the page. The well-dressed Prietita sits leisurely on a tree in her yard
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while Joaquín carries the firewood he needs to sell to support his mother’s small and irregular
income. His shabby and ill-fitting clothes, in contrast to Prietita’s outfit, immediately catch
the viewer’s eye: his ripped jeans and shirt have obviously been mended many times and the
pink trainers appear to be more suitable for a girl than a boy. The teenagers’ social status is
also expressed through their position in the image. Prietita, who has her own yard to play in,
is positioned high up in the tree, while Joaquín, who stands outside the yard, is below her.
The two teenagers’ worlds are far apart, which is also visually indicated by the fact that
Prietita is positioned on the privileged recto page while Joaquín is literally forced into the
lower left corner of the verso, as most of the double page is taken up by Prietita’s personal
realm. Although the barren tree hints at the sparse vegetation of the border area, the grass on
her side is green and interspersed with flowers, the chicken functioning as an additional
indicator of a certain amount of wealth. It becomes apparent that the double page functions
as a micro-image of the US-Mexican border, the open gate which Joaquín does not dare to
transcend, representing the open, yet difficult to cross border between the two nations. The
text is written in English and Spanish.
On the next page, Prietita notices the large boils on Joaquín’s forearms, setting the
rest of the story in motion as she tries to heal his sores. As Joaquín and Prietita’s friendship
develops, Joaquín even takes Prietita home to his mother, where the young Latina girl learns
more about the living conditions of the illegal Mexican immigrants, who have fallen into
living conditions just as precarious as the ones they tried to escape from. A whole double
page is devoted to Joaquín and his mother’s shed, which they have obviously attempted to
turn into a home. The poor living conditions of mother and son are almost tangible. The coat
hooks on the wall function as wardrobe and a small light bulb brings little light into the dark
cabin. The shack abounds with paraphernalia associated with Mexican culture such as
iconostases, a corn cob and the image of a traditionally dressed Mexican woman. Moreover,
the image of Don Pedrito, a famous healer (curandero) from the South Texas Valley Region,
highlights one of the main topics of the picturebook: the lack of health care among the illegal
immigrants and Prietita’s decision to become a healer. Joaquín and his mother are directly
juxtaposed with Prietita, the latter once again well-dressed and fed.
Anzaldúa’s children’s book goes far beyond telling the story of two teenagers who
become friends despite their different cultural and social backgrounds, as Anzaldúa touches
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upon many of the issues prevalent in the Chicano community. Prietita does not represent the
traditional Chicana, but is portrayed as a strong-minded and independent girl who constantly
challenges the stereotypes of her community. She supports Joaquín and defends him against
the bullying of the other Mexican-American children in the village and even hides him and
his mother when the widely feared border police, la migra, ransacks the village. As Millán
(2015, p. 208) points out: ‘In this manner Anzaldúa inserts her alter ego, manifested in the
form of Prietita, as a witness to injustices by framing the protagonist’s benevolence towards
Joaquín within the context of contemporary immigration debates and in response to
xenophobia’.
Both the physical and the civic borders, discussed earlier in this article, are frequently
alluded to in Friends from the Other Side/Amigos Del Otro Lado. The Mexican-American
community is divided by their attitude towards the illegal immigrants. While the children
bully Joaquín, it is the village’s herb-woman who hides him and his mother from the border
police. When the police arrive, one of the women in the village misdirects the policemen:
‘They heard a woman say, “Yes, I saw some over there,” pointing to the gringo side of town
– the white side. Everybody laughed, even the Chicano migra’. The quote alludes to the
composition of the border police forces, consisting of a ‘gringo’ US-American and a Chicano
migra, who despite the fact that he collaborates with the state, identifies with ‘his’ people.
Implications for the Classroom
Considering the fact that Spanish is one of most spoken and favourite foreign languages in
Germany as well as the relevance of politics in a globalizing world, Friends from the Other
Side/Amigos Del Otro Lado offers many opportunities for classroom work and creating a
translanguaging space which can be read with students from different age groups at primary
as well as secondary level (see also Delanoy 2012, pp. 425-440). In the following, we discuss
some ideas for reading the picturebook in the classroom with teenage learners in the German
EFL context as an example and describe some sample activities.
Before reading the picturebook, the learners’ awareness of their own and others’
plurilingual reality can be raised by investigating with them their own language repertoire
and biography (see Busch, 2013, pp. 14-26 and Krumm, 2005, pp. 43-54 for a more detailed
discussion of the history and current state of language biography research). In order to raise
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the learners’ awareness of their own language repertoire – the languages they have come in
contact with, have access to or which play a role in their lives – Busch (2013) suggests asking
learners to draw a language portrayal (see Figure 2 for an example). In contrast to activities
where learners report orally on their language repertoires, language portrayals have several
advantages. The act of drawing gives learners additional time to reflect on their languages
and offers them the opportunity to look at themselves and their language experiences from
the outside. Furthermore, the visual mode offers different forms of representation, including
forms, colours, and written captions, which ideally lead to a more nuanced representation
and provide insights into the learners’ emotional attachment to certain languages and
varieties, sometimes ‘[…] not standardised or officially recognised as languages in
education’ (Busch, 2006, p. 10). Last not least, the images so generated can serve as a
presentation aid (Busch, 2013, pp. 36-37). The language portrayal depicted in Figure 2 may
serve as an example: the student teacher who drew this portrayal was born in Germany but
has Turkish roots. The portrayal shows the languages he speaks, allocating them to different
parts of the body. He refers to himself as a plurilingual person, who not only speaks different
languages but also dialects, sociolects, and ethnolects. For example, he refers to
‘Mannheimerisch’, a dialect spoken in his hometown Mannheim. The languages the student
refers to are supported by colours as well as images of different flags. The shape of the heart,
with the symbols from the Turkish flag inside, stands out in the drawing, described with the
words yearning, emotions, and warmth. This most likely expresses his Turkish cultural
identity.
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Figure 2: A language portrayal produced in a class on multilingualism at the University of Education,
Karlsruhe, in 2018
In the picturebook itself, the whole story is told in English and Chicano Spanish, thus
bringing the multilingual world into the classroom. The two named languages are always
presented next to each other, either on the same page or on facing pages, making it possible
to look at both languages simultaneously. Moreover, the English text is interspersed with
Spanish words such as mojado, gringo, or macho, some of which may be considered
offensive as the bullying scene illustrates. A scene shows how Joaquín is bullied by some of
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the other children in the village, one of them being Prietita’s cousin Teté. Teté, the group
leader, yells at Joaquín and calls him mojadito/mojado, hinting at his illegal status and
establishing their superiority over the illegal immigrant. Prietita is situated on the facing
recto page, looking at the scene from afar, while being positioned spatially close to the
‘bullies’. Prietita’s reaction to her friends’ bullying is rather balanced. While she stands up
for Joaquín, she refrains from distancing herself from her friends and says: ‘She had known
Teté [one of the tormentors] and his friends all her life. Sometimes she even liked Teté, but
now she was angry at him’.
The following questions can open up classroom discussions of this double-page
spread:
• Describe the double page in as detailed a way as possible. Without looking
at the text, how would you describe the relationship between Prietita,
Joaquín, and the other children? What does Joaquín’s body posture tell you
about his feelings?
• Have you ever been in a similar situation? Have you ever been bullied, or
bullied someone, or observed how someone was bullied? What did you do?
• Imagine you were in Prietita’s position. How would you react to the bullying?
• Read the text in English and/or Spanish. Why is the word ‘mojadito/mojado’
(a little wet) an insult? Can you think of similar words in German or other
languages you know?
Close reading and explicit comparison of a (smallish) passage of text in the way
described above can then be used to encourage learners to reflect on why there are Spanish
words interspersed in the English text and what effect this creates. This could be followed
up by collecting examples from the learners’ own language practices outside the classroom,
for example situations where they translanguage in everyday life. Moreover, learners can
collect and discuss their own parallel texts, for example fare penalty notices in buses, again
comparing and contrasting the different named language used and trying to guess which one
might be the original that the other translations are based on, and then compare these with
similar notices from a country where the languages used are the named national languages.
The difference between these texts could then be followed by a discussion of cultural
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differences and whether direct translation equivalents exists (see Delanoy 2012, pp. 425-439
for a detailed description of a multilingual translation based on Anzaldúa’s Friends from the
Other Side/Amigos Del Otro Lado). Finally, learners should be encouraged to produce their
own multilingual texts in groups, with one group member noting the challenges and
discussions around word choice, subtle meaning differences, etc.
Conclusion
The aim of this article was to explore the potential of multilingual picturebooks to open up
translanguaging space in ELT. We argue that translanguaging and the inclusion of
multilingual literature are not only relevant in English as an additional or second language
learning contexts, but also in EFL classrooms because they create the space and the
opportunity for learners to reflect on their own (trans)language practices inside and outside
the classroom. This contributes to raising the learners’ metalinguistic awareness and
equipping them with communicative and meaning-making strategies that become
increasingly useful in the multilingual world we now all inhabit. Multilingual picturebooks,
as this article has shown, offer many opportunities for the EFL classroom to approach the
issues of multilingualism and translanguaging from a practical perspective.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the editors of this journal and three anonymous reviewers for their
helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.
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